CBR15 Book 49: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" by Gabrielle Zevin

Page count: 482 pages

Audio book length: 13hrs 52 mins

Rating: 4 stars

CBR15 Bingo: North America

I've been hearing about this book since it came out. So many people I know on the internet and whose opinions I trust have read, reviewed and absolutely loved it. So I feel bad only rating it four stars, but for all that that the story and the characters appealed to me, there was something that kept making me prioritise other things over listening more to the audio book, and I never really fully emotionally connected with this one.

There are so many reviews out there of this book already, so I don't want to spend too much time on the plot. Sam and Sadie become best friends playing video games in a hospital while Sam is recovering from an awful car accident, which leaves him permanently crippled, while Sadie's sister is being treated for cancer. Because of an unwise decision of Sadie's, they drift apart, only to meet again as college students at Harvard. They immediately reconnect and decide to start designing a video game together. Aided by Sam's charming and rich roommate Marx, the three become a force to be reconned with in the video game world.

We learn about Sam and Sadie from flashbacks and flash-forwards. Both are fiercely loyal and love each other deeply, but are also easily hurt, terrible at communicating with one another, and stubborn enough that through the years, a lot of misunderstandings which could have been solved by SIMPLE conversations keep them from being there fully for one another. Marx is the person who tries to mediate between them and also keep their personality quirks from completely ruining any chance they have of success.

For all that I spent a lot of time wanting to smack either Sam, Sadie, or both of them on the back of the head and shout at them to stop being so self-centred, and maybe talk to the other about what actually bothered them, they also felt like real people to me. Marx was clearly the character I loved the most, and without him in the narrative, I'm not sure I would have continued past the first third or so of the novel. 

I've never been a big gamer, myself, but grew up watching my brothers play console games and have spent a lot of the last 23 years watching my husband play games as well. You don't need to know or care anything about video games to read this book, although I suspect reading about the designing and programming of games might add an extra level of enjoyment for those who know about these things. I like learning new things while reading fiction, and the insight into graphics engines and the like was fascinating to me. 

I don't love this book passionately as so many of my fellow Cannonball reviewers, but it made me feel a full range of emotions and at one point made me ugly cry and I will happily recommend it to others because it's a very well-written book. It also made me miss my best friend a lot, because reading about close friendships inevitably does just that. 

Judging a book by its cover: I love the paperback cover, with its bright rainbow colours, contrasting the almost black-and-white feel of the iconic image of Hokusai's Great Wave. The image drew me to first pick up the book and that's the job of cover design. So well, done art department. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 78: "The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep" by H.G. Parry

Page count: 496 pages

Rating: 3 stars

Official book description: 

For his entire life, Charley Sutherland has concealed a magical ability he can't quite control: he can bring characters from books into the real world. His older brother, Rob - a young lawyer with an utterly normal life - hopes that this strange family secret will disappear with disuse, and he will be discharged from his duty of protecting Charley and the real world from each other.

But then, literary characters start causing trouble in their city, making threats about destroying the world, and for once, it isn't Charley's doing. There's someone else out there who shares his powers and it's up to Charley and a reluctant Rob to stop them - before anyone gets to The End.

This was the September selection of my fantasy/sci-fi book club, and yet another book I've read this year where I hadn't heard of the author or book before picking it up. Only a few weeks before reading this book, I watched the new Armando Ianucci adaptation of David Copperfield, as that gave me a little bit of insight into Uriah Heep as a character and the general plot of the novel he originates in. There's a bunch of other famous literary characters who turn up over the course of the story, proving to me that taking a total of three years of English literature studies as part of my university career wasn't a complete waste of time. 

Among the famous literary characters who turn up over the course of the book, we find Dorian Gray, who in this version could give Lisbeth Salander a run for her money where hacking and computer surveillance are concerned, a very temperamentally unstable Heathcliff, the White Witch of Narnia who rides a motorcycle (much easier upkeep than reindeer) and wears a motorcycle, and five different versions of Fitzwilliam Darcy (they all share a house, only one has bothered to learn how to cook). Neither of these have been read to life by Charlie, one of our protagonists, they have appeared because some reader, or the collective imagination of readers in general made them manifest. They all live in a strange, mostly hidden side street in downtown Wellington, New Zealand, where Charlie works as a university professor and his brother Rob is a lawyer.

I count Charlie as a protagonist, even though we don't actually get any chapters from his POV. He's just such a central character, and so much of the plot revolves around him and his relationship with Rob, who probably gets the most POV chapters. We also get some from Rob's fiancee Lydia, and some from the POV of Millie, a fictional character from a series of children's adventure novels who was brought out of one of her novels when Charlie was a child and managed to escape. Unusually, she's the only character who has actually aged and changed, something these creations are not supposed to do. She has a job as an accountant and works with Dorian Grey to actually get money and finance the various fictional characters on their secret street. 

The fictional characters are scared because there are rumours that there are big changes afoot. Charlie and Rob discover that someone else shares Charlie's abilities and can bring fictional characters into the real world (and read them back onto the pages again as needed) and has been using several fictional characters for criminal endeavours. This individual seems to want to bring forth a fictional world to replace that of the real one, which would obviously be pretty disastrous. Since this person keeps sending people and/or creatures to kill Charlie, they figure out that it must be someone at least vaguely connected with him, and the two brothers, helped by Millie and some of the literary residents of the secret street work together to figure out the identity of the villain, and how to stop them, before it's too late.

Charlie was a prodigy who read classical works of literature when he was three and had a ph.D before he was 20. Being his older brother has always been rather exhausting for Rob, as even without the whole "being able to actually bring forth people, things, and creatures from books" thing, his brother wasn't exactly the most socially adept human being. He feels like he's both lived in the shadow of his brother's accomplishments his whole life, and constantly had to bail his brother out of trouble. Despite the advice of his parents, Rob has never told Lydia, his fiancee, anything about Charlie's special abilities, so she just knows something is seriously off, but not what he's hiding from her.

While there is absolutely the big, rather strange plot of this villainous individual who shares Charlie's powers to replace the real world with a fictional one, I would say that the most important theme of the book is the relationship between the brothers, which starts out as rather fraught and is tested in a number of ways throughout the story. They clearly care for one another very much but have never been able to communicate clearly with one another, and Rob's resentments and Charlie's poor self-esteem need to be dealt with if they're going to get through the story to the happy ending. 

I was surprised when I discovered that the author behind the initials is actually a woman because it's such a male-dominated book. My favourite characters, however, were Millie and Lydia (who I thought was way too good for Rob, and should consider dumping him, even after she discovered the truth about everything and he started becoming a slightly better boyfriend). When we discussed the book in my book club, my views were shared by several of the readers, and we all felt rather disappointed once it was revealed who the actual villain of the story is, and what that individual's motives are. It just felt very anti-climactic and we wished that bit of the story had been more interesting and imaginative. 

Still, this is the author's debut novel, and it's certainly unusual and a fun enough read, especially if you have a fairly wide-reaching knowledge of classical English literature. 

Judging a book by its cover: Shelves and shelves of leather-bound old books, surely every book lover's dream? There's even a ladder to help you reach those books on the higher shelves, which suggests that it's a library with high ceilings. I must admit, the cover is very appealing to me. It's hard to resist a well-stocked library.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR2 Book 100: "Victoria" by Knut Hamsun

Publisher: Den Norske Bokklubben
Page count: 140 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: October 16th, 2010
Date finished: October 31st, 2010

Johannes is the miller's son, pining for Victoria, daughter of the local estate owner. The book starts when he is 14 and she is 10. A lonely child, Johannes wants to play with the rich children, but is normally only called upon to wait on them and row them around when they have guests from the city visiting. He spends most of his time alone, using his fertile imagination to invent solitary games and adventures.

When he is 18, and returns home from school in the city, he hopes he has finally been noticed by Victoria after he rescues a young girl from drowning, in front of Victoria and her rich friends. But she still seems more taken with Otto, a young soldier and friend of the family, and once again his hopes are dashed.

Johannes goes to university, and becomes a poet and a writer. After publishing several poems, he moves on to novels, all the while dreaming of Victoria. He is aware that they are from different social classes, but pines for her nonetheless. As his literary fame grows, he is accepted into higher layers of society, among them the home of the girl he rescued from drowning. He also sees Victoria again, but she appears to be engaged. Still, one evening, when he walks her home, she professes his love for him.

Knowing that her family would never accept his suit, Johannes writes several angsty romantic novels and moves abroad. When he finally returns, years later, he arrives back in time for Victoria's engagement party to Otto. Victoria's family are in great need of money, Otto's family have lots. Camilla, the girl he rescued is also there, and nearly 18, she is very infatuated with him. The romance between Johannes and Victoria seems more impossible than ever.

Victoria was written by Hamsun in 1898, and is apparently considered not only one of his most popular books, but one of the most beautiful and well known love stories in Norwegian literature. If so, the state of romantic literature in Norway before 1898 and since, is deplorable. While I understand what Hamsun was trying to do with his tragic romance, it is just not very effective. Mainly because Johannes is a total weenie and Victoria is given as much personality as a wet rag.

Why should Hamsun bother infusing the object of Johannes' affection and love with any sort of personality or character? The more important thing is the development of the young man and HIS feelings. Also, the lyrical descriptions of the Norwegian country side, those are important. This is period literature, and as a former lit student, I know I shouldn't be upset that writers who lived a 150 years are misogynistic or write only from the POV of the gender they know.

It's not like Jane Austen writes anything but the female point of view in Pride and Prejudice. But at least there is some substance in her books. In Victoria, the whole romance seems based on the characters interacting a few times when they were kids, then pining a whole lot for each other and constructing elaborate fantasies about the other party, a few short meeting as adults, where they have no chance to get to know each other more closely, a lot of angst from Johannes' side, then the book ends.

I read this mainly because we (the Norwegian teachers at the school where I work) are forcing the 10th graders to read the book so they have a literary classic to analyze for their final exam in the spring. I suspect that most of them are going to find the book both boring and deeply uninteresting, and I can't say that I blame them. This is the second Hamsun novel I have read now, and while his descriptions of the Norwegian nature are stunning, his plotting and so called romances leave a lot to be desired, and I don't know if I will read any more of his books unless forced.